Dhaleta Surender Kumar
Media

People's Samachar to launch Indore edition next month

The Hindi daily, People's Samachar is all set to expand to Indore, Jabalpur and Gwalior in the coming months

People's Samachar, a Hindi daily that debuted from Bhopal in February, will launch its second edition from Indore in August.

The daily is part of the Rs 1,500-crore, Bhopal based People's Group, which has business interests in educational institutes, hospitals, hotels, real estate and media and entertainment. Suresh N Vijaywargia is the chairman of the group.

The Bhopal edition, according to Sushant Roy, head, marketing and branding, People's Samachar, has a print run of 82,000 copies and a cover price of Rs 2. The edition covers up-country areas such as Vidisha, Sehore, Hoshangabad and Raisen.

People's Samachar to launch Indore edition next month
The Indore edition, too, would be launched with the same cover price, but with a higher print-run of one lakh copies. It will cover up-country areas such as Ujjain, Devas, Ratlam, Mandsaur, Khandwa and Burhanpur.

The following months would see the daily expanding to Jabalpur and Gwalior, in that order. The group is also analysing the Chhattisgarh market to launch the daily's Raipur and Bilaspur editions, early next year.

The daily that is being positioned as, 'Naya Zamana, Naya Akhbar' (new era, new newspaper), according to Roy, is targeted at "chief wage earners, the youth and home-makers (SEC ABC), in the age group of 16-65."

The daily, according to Roy, differs from its competitors in "more pictorial, rather than text-based, representation of news."

With the launch of the Indore edition, Roy would be looking to lure national advertisers too. As an innovation to entice local advertisers, People's Samachar has started a periodical listing of local business.

"It's an innovation on the lines of Yellow Pages directories. We publish a thematic map of Bhopal, which is 99 per cent accurate to scale, on which local businessmen list their business addresses. This will be featured category-wise periodically. We've already carried the consumer electronics category and soon would be carrying the lifestyle and education map," Roy explains.

People's Samachar has already started using the media mix of OOH -- hoardings, wall-paintings, taxis -- local cable and radio to promote the daily in Indore. "We are going to start the subscription drive next week," says Roy.

On one-year of subscription to the daily, People's Samachar is offering free one-year accidental/health insurance worth Rs 1 lakh, in association with The New India Assurance Company. Also, on offer are discounted health check-ups at group hospitals and a discount of Rs 15 on the monthly bill of the daily.

The group also launched a general interest English magazine, People's Post, in Delhi in February, at a cover price of Rs 20.

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